Is today’s I.C.E. Bone Spur Trump’s equivalent to Hitler’s Brownshirts, which was turned into Hitler’s private army of street thugs? Is I.C.E. the old U.S.’ Silvershirts, who can now threaten and intimidate people at will by splitting up families, even taking children from babies to teens from their parents.
They have begun to deport people who have been here, living lawful, peaceful lives some for up to thirty years, some who served honorably in the military and others who are legal immigrants and were awaiting citizenship. Yet Trump’s in-laws quest for citizenship was fast tracked while Trump is denying citizenship to others.
These I.C.E. people have a vast statutory power, a chilling new directive from the top inside America’s unfolding immigration tragedy. I.C.E. is the fastest growing bureaucracy than any agency in peacetime. The I.C.E. enforcers are Trump’s private army and they love him because these people are among the less educated, have profound inferiority complexes, and have an insatiable need for relevance and importance that clouds their judgment.
Today, I.C.E.’s mandate is to make life so fearful and miserable that people here legally will just give up their quest to become citizens and just leave. In 2012, Congress appropriated $18 billion for I.C.E. enforcement. Some $14 billion was spent for all the other major criminal law enforcement.
I.C.E., authorized in 2003 as part of Homeland Security under George W. Bush t counteract the mess his administration created, is consistently ranked among the worst workplaces in the federal government in 2016. The organization ranked 299th on a list of 305 agencies. Most I.C.E. employees only have a high school degree or its equivalent. They are looked upon with disdain from all other law enforcement agency employees.
The I.C.E. agents who recognize what the agency has become is not healthy are desperately trying to get into another law enforcement job. So, when you combine low education, low self-esteem, hating their jobs, how do you think they treat the people Trump has vilified and given permission to torment?
I.C.E. is teeming with racists. The government doesn’t have the resources to remove the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, but it can create circumstances unpleasant enough to encourage them to leave on their own just like Hitler did to the Jews, and when that didn’t convince other Jews to leave, Hitler resorted to killing them. Are we here in the U.S. headed in the same direction as Hitler? If so, I do not want to be a part of it.
We need to vote for people who will stop Trump and his private army and work toward rebuilding the damage done by Trump and the cowardly, complicit Republican party.
These candidates have to support unions, minimum wage increase, healthcare for all, free education up to a bachelor’s degree, equitable housing and a universal basic income supported by making greedy corporations pay for renting our Commons and make these same corporations and ultra wealthy must bring back the cash they stashed in overseas’ banks to avoid paying their fair share in taxes. It is time these greedy, selfish people pay up or move overseas with their money.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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